Starting Video Instantly after a Pre-roll Ad

Blog 2 min read | Feb 14, 2018 | JW Player

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Achieving a server-side ad insertion experience on the client-side with JW 8.1

One of the most lucrative and engaging placements for online video advertising is the pre-roll ad. This is the ad that comes before main content that a viewer is attempting to watch. When the ad completes or is skipped to the main content, it is imperative to start video as quickly as possible. If viewers are stuck waiting for the video to load, they will leave and likely not come back. The rate at which viewers abandon video increases the longer they have to wait. Studies show that most viewers are willing to wait 1-2 seconds for video to start. After that, you can expect a 6% drop-off for each additional second of wait time.

When it comes to transitioning smoothly from advertising to content, online video has always trailed behind broadcast TV. This is due to the nature of client-side ad insertion and programmatic video. Server-side ad insertion is a potential solution to achieve a seamless experience, but it has been two years since it was added to the VAST 4.0 specification. Overall adoption is slow and expensive because of the lack of standardization around the actual insertion and tracking. It also requires infrastructure changes that only premium media publishers can typically afford.

We launched JW8 to provide a broader base with a broadcast-quality online video experience. Using intelligence gleaned from our large network of video players, we learned how to get 75% of all of our video starts after an ad plays to be under two seconds. Our latest iteration of JW8 improves time to first frame by 100%. In JW 8.1, 75% of videos start up in under a second, with the vast majority of these plays starting close to instantaneously.

The result? An online video experience that’s as seamless as cable TV, even on slower mobile networks. Check out this video that shows the difference in performance when on a cellular network.

What’s next? We are going to extend this functionality and keep making those green bars bigger.

To learn more about how to become a video-first publisher, schedule time to talk with one of our video experts.

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